skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Concerning #2: I would love to hear a discussion on why Caecilia is great, or not in this instance. Or why font __ is great, or not in this instance. Gruber goes into that a little (which is insightful), however as most typography related discussions I see, it often comes down to "I prefer this or that and so don't like how they used this other one instead." But why? Do cases exist where it is strictly personal preference? In that case why bother pointing it out? Or is the actual reason not known? Or is it laziness?

Typography-tuned-people often claim there's a right way and wrong way, which is probably true. However it's fascinating to think that a vast majority of people aren't tuned into the existence of the subtleties, affected (true?), or care about most of the subtleties -- possibly because the actual impact it has is very very minimal. (Again, is it?)
My point is that GPUs have significantly different architecture from most of these "many cores on a chip" designs. Original reason for that was clearly that such architecture was necessary for graphics, coincidentally it works better for many interesting HPC workloads. It's clear that manufacturers are introducing technologies that are not required for graphics, but they cannot be expected to do modifications that will make their GPUs unusable for graphics.

And as for SIMD/SIMT, I mentioned SIMD mostly in relation to operations on short vectors done by one thread, which is mostly irrelevant to overall architecture of the core, as it can very well be implemented by pure combinational logic in one cycle given enough space. My mental model of how modern GPU core (physical, not logical) actually works is essentially some kind of simplistic RISC/VLIW design with large amounts of registers with compiler and or hardware interleaving instructions of multiple threads into one pipeline, which may or may not be how it actually works but it looks probable to me.

In my opinion most of chips like Epiphany IV or XMOS or whatever, in contrast to GPUs, are useful for only limited classes of workloads as they tend to be memory starved.
If you have someone's address and an RFID reader, and they have an RFID chip, then what do you need the RFID serial number for? If you're already reading, then just go to their house and scan. If you get multiple, then go again during the day when you expect them to be at school.

That will get the vast majority.

And yes, I totally get that RT has no problem pushing bullshit; I agree. Doesn't mean we should discount it completely. We could miss a chance to improve.
I've been frustrated at the quality of the FP lately

If you are frustrated by the quality of the front page on Hacker News, one thing you can do about that is emphasize the positive by visiting the new page

http://news.ycombinator.com/newest

and upvoting the stories that are good. I often see good stories on the new page that never make it to the front page. There is a lot of good stuff submitted every day on HN. Improving the signal:noise ratio here means improving both sides of the ratio, by flagging bad submissions (submissions that violate the guidelines, including submissions of on-topic content from lousy sources) and upvoting good submissions.
Your Junk Is Other People’s Treasure or Comfort Zone Escape Velocity
Page turning buttons are the killer feature for me. I've tried reading for 4-5 hours with the touch, and having to the screen all the time made it as bad as reading on an iPad for me. The font is also kind of crappy, but I can live with it - not really a make-it/break-it deal.

After reading on the Gen1, and Gen2, I've stuck with a Gen 3 Kindle, and I'm hoping Amazon comes out with an eReader with a combination of backlighting (I have the Leather case with Light) and great buttons. (The Gen3 are a little stiff - much, much better than the "You touch it, you turn the pages Gen1" - but still not what I'm really looking for - I guess button are really hard to do properly.)

I'm also hoping for better battery life - I usually blow through my battery in a couple days of heavy reading, so I always end up having to carry a hyperjuice when camping to get through a full week of reading - it would be great to have a kindle that gives you a full week of nonstop reading.
most popular tumblr of all time.
I agree about the page-turning buttons. That is why I didn't get the touch and won't get the paperwhite. I don't mind not having backlighting, so I'll stick with the cheapest Kindle.
Underneath Figure 4.2:

I want to addresss on possible source

should be

I want to addresss one possible source

(on -> one)

Peace.
Want to Dispose of Apple's iPod Packaging? Just Add Water
"stealing her passport and return tickets so she couldn't go home would be a kind thing to do."

A kind thing to do for her or for the students?
It's 2012. Anyone who sincerely expects options to vest without dilution and other shenanigans is naive at best. Been there, done that in 2000 and 2004.
Little Brother anyone? I've always told people that book is hyperbolic but good anyway; seems like that might not be the case :/
Actionable analytics - Step by step guide
Life is short. Putting up with abuse in the pursuit of a potential windfall is part of what's wrong with our lottery culture these days.

As a gamer friend always reminds me, "The cake is a lie."
I heard he was working on a to-do list app.
> Gruber's points are all extremely nitpicky.

That's what we pay him for, isn't it?
bcache is specifically for using an SSD to cache something with much higher latency, usually a hard drive (or RAID array), but possibly also a network block device. Because of that, bcache is tuned to take advantage of the strengths of current SSDs, and to avoid write patterns that lead to excessive wear of the SSD, and to distinguish between random accesses (where SSDs excel) and sequential (where a RAID5 might be faster). This makes bcache better than the more generic dm-cache for the right workload, but it also means bcache is more complex - at best, it is months away from making it in to the staging area.
This thread began with me describing the general case, "these modern rideservices".

I happen to think there will be few of these modern rideservices, rather than many, because the matching/reputation market has natural monopoly characteristics. But that's just an aside.

The tech/market/reputation checks I've been describing don't depend on Uber or any particular company. They are inherent to the category. I am making a case for the modern mobile-dispatched-and-billed rideservices category, not Uber specifically.

(My guess would also be that the average customer is more likely to someday face economic 'harm' from an eventual dispatcher monopoly, than from the sort of dangerous/abusive/unaccountable car/driver issues that you've been mentioning. But those sorts of antitrust concerns also need to be handled in retrospect, after observing how they develop, and not based on anticipatory paranoia about what might someday happen.)
The hardest part about this entire project took me about an hour to figure out. No, it wasn't sorting. No, it wasn't trying to organize or query search results. It was God damn JavaScript Closures. Believe it or not, out of everything, this took me the longest to figure out. I was close to just saying "Fuck it" and not allowing people to click on links.

Sounds like underscore.js would have cut your development time by more than 25%. You should check it out - it's a great library.
Exactly. To draw a computing analogy, in order for it to work we'd have to be able to make virtual machines that outperform the machines they're running on, and recursively. In order for it to work, each simulated universe would have to progress to the point we have in ours, and also be able to simulate getting to this point much faster than it took to get there itself. It quickly starts to sound like perfect compression or perpetual motion.
Maciej and I agree, but you are holding Mozilla to a different standard from Apple. Another reason I'm striving to ignore you (for both our sakes).
I remember this one part of the documentary Born Rich where one of the recently-turned-18 kids said that when you're born stupidly rich in the US, getting sued over something -- anything -- is basically a right a passage. He basically said it's not a matter of if you'll get sued, just when you'll get sued.

Given how litigious the US is, if I were super rich I could not imagine keeping a significant portion of my assets in the country. If you have a lot of money it makes a lot of sense to not only diversify your investments but your jurisdictional exposure as well.

If you know the lawsuits are going to take forever (time) and cost a bunch (money), not having many assets in the US makes it easy to accept a default judgement, declare bankruptcy and write off the loss entirely without ever paying any lawyers a cent.

In this case, the people being sued seem like they totally deserve a lawsuit, but that doesn't change the fact that it is naive to not diversify jurisdictionally.
The interesting bit is they are crowd-sourcing the 200 page document for their readers to pick out the interesting bits and report on them. Is this a new model for reporting?
Packing to fly to go visit my customers in the USA in a couple hours.

You don't think I actually work for Berlin salary, do you?! This is the Internet!
I'm not sure about the installer demographics or user base of Ubuntu Server, but assuming that users who install the Server edition would be more Linux-savvy than newbie desktop users and be able to appreciate how much value Ubuntu brings them, wouldn't it make sense to show this screen there as well?
Your comment is one of those which I so very much hate about HN, because you already know it's wrong, you're just writing it because you like to argue and insult others.

By this stupid logic, you can never be happy, because there's always someone with more reasons to be happy, while the victims of a serial killer probably had it better off than a child who dies of starvation in Africa.

(Of course, you're a smart person, so I'm sure you're aware of how stupid this line of arguing is.)

You seem to be pretty strongly in support of someone who by all means cheated his employees. If that's the case, I certainly hope future employees have the foresight to do some research on who you are before agreeing to work for you.
Why doesn't he at least give a nod to Trello when asked about to-do lists? Give your co-founder a plug!
The results show that the 4 other links receive very low attention (3 links with 2 points, 1 with 21 points, all of them with no comments). Given the HN audience is spread across the globe with consistent interest in programming articles, I think there must be inference of posting time. Poster karma is not a big factor here because ColinWright has 33711 karma. Anyone wants to conduct such a research?
Well, developers work on the internet. Good freelance developers command $70+/hour on the internet.

The cost of living in the hip part of Berlin (Kreuzberg/Friedrichshain) has nearly DOUBLED in the last 5 years. You're now looking at nearly $1500 per month for a 900 square foot 2-bedroom. :D

My place a bit farther out is €1000/mo and is 1800 square feet. My office is on one floor (the one with the small balcony) and living quarters upstairs (the big balcony).

Sorry, I'll stop now.
I guess nobody has told kids about what adults do with their grocery store loyalty cards: randomly trade them with other people so the data becomes less useful.

Also, which RFID technology are they using? The readers look like Octopus card readers. (Which is FeLiCa-based.) I doubt the claim that the cards are "always broadcasting" and that designing a practical remote RFID reader is much more difficult than "parents" imagine. But even the federal government put some privacy provisions into the RFID passports, so you'd think that the same courtesy could be extended to high school students too.
I was just wondering if nginx would have something similar to the apache module. Glad to see this here. Unfortunately I don't have the skills to help, but if there is another way to support this, please, let me know!
How Rogers is making their customers vulnerable to fraud
First thing I thought of was the Emacs kill-ring. Emacs has been around since the 70's, so it's not like the concept hasn't been out there for awhile.
Thank you so much. I'll try to get my hands on these books!
This is why i support private gun ownership. In such a situation, I think a little lead coercion is necessary.
The article states that the 4-inch display is the same size that apple uses in the iPhone5, but isn't that a huge assumption that Samsung would move to a similar aspect ratio?

Is there a better way to measure mobile screens then inches (or x/y pixel count)?
I second that. I would like to see what that TED talk has to say about keeping humans employed in something for as long as possible.

I want to think software engineering/programming would be one of the last jobs to be replaced by machines. It would last until the "singularity" is reached which is when computers would be able to program themselves (re-writing and improving their own code exponentially).
This was really helpful. Thank you. I'm still trying to figure out how to work on things that depends on other things to be done, and how we can keep productive even if something is not fully ready. That is one of my main difficulties.
I've heard from a lot of people that your reputation means everything. It's a shame that Pincus's didn't catch up with him sooner, since he hardly deserves anything he's getting.
I'm curious. It's been a long time since I visited San Francisco, so maybe things have massively changed, but I recall that it used to have things like coffee shops, restaurants, fast food places, bookstores, groceries, movie theaters, and all the other kinds of things you'll find in pretty much any city in the US.

These places employed baristas, waiters, bus boys, burger flippers, sales clerks, stock boys, and such. Such people typically work fixed shifts, and so unlike many developers have time to find people to start families with and have children.

Based on some of the comments here, it would seem that getting by on just a developer's salary in San Francisco is near impossible--you have to have stock money to keep you afloat.

So how come waiters, sales clerks, etc., can work in San Francisco and make ends meet for not only themselves for for a family, but single developers making more than the combined income of that entire working class family cannot? One comment mentioned that the developers might have student loans to pay off, but that's countered by the working class family might have to pay a lot to add their kids to their health insurance.

Same question for New York, and any other place where people consider $100k/year too low to be a living wage for a programmer.
> P.S. my knowledge of OpenVZ may be outdated because I moved from OpenVZ VPS servers a couple of years ago.

This is still true for OpenVZ. You can't really run JVM or SBCL on OpenVZ VPSes for that reason.
One other factor that's missing from the study is the level of success achieved by the companies. Instead of just grouping companies into "Generating Revenue"/"Profitable" or "IPO'd", they should have done a breakdown by how successful the company is. If the stereotype that bell curves for men and women have the different stdevs is true, then the data would show that companies founded by men have both a higher chance of failure (higher risk) but also a larger return on investment. Unfortunately, most gender based studies tend to only care about the means of the samples and ignore the stdevs. For something like the founding of a successful company, the black swans at the tail of the bell curves matter more than the rest of the bell curve which consists of failures or mediocre successes.
One idea I came across a while ago is the idea of a 'national dividend'. Basically everyone gets a base amount of money you could live off. If people want to work harder and earn more money, they are free to.
Unfortunately I can't recall the book I read it in.
> Given how litigious the US is, if I were super rich I could not imagine keeping a significant portion of my assets in the country.

You don't even need to be wealthy. The US no longer has the rule of law, so you can now be stripped of your possessions even if you are _accused_ of a crime:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture#The_trend_towa...
What's even more misguided is that using it for attendance is going to enable skipping class not enforce it. There's nothing preventing Student A from carrying both his ID and Student B's while Student B skips class. Not only will Student B succeed in skipping class, they get get an alibi as well.
I have been thinking this same thing. I constantly read it as the "Kindle Paperweight" and think it's some sort of Kindle rant before I realize.
I instantly question hardcore when I see the story is from RT, personally.
Personally, I don't really give a hoot about the gender of who I work with - pleasing aesthetics are nice, but I'd work with Swamp Thing if he'd get the job done.

I'm sure there's just as many well spoken, even-keeled men as there are women, and perhaps women do come out of this test better than men. Maybe because they have to work harder to overcome discrimination, maybe because they charm their way into the mainly male start-up work-force.

Again, it doesn't matter. Don't go out looking for particular genders, because all you're doing is limiting yourself.

tldr: tldr.
Show HN: My first Mac App, an email backup solution
I think it's an option that the publisher can control if they wish. In theory this is good, in reality it probably means it gets turned on or off randomly depending on which intern converted books today.
Senator Opens Investigation of Data Brokers
One thing that annoyed me (and it's typical of writing on gender and racial issues) is that he bends over backwards to state, effectively, "not that having women execs don't drive success". This hyper-careful threading brings to mind the famous Seinfeld "not that there's anything wrong with that" episode ("The Outing").

My approach in these matters is Bayesian: Do having female, black, Asian, Indian, etc. executives drive start-up success? The a priori probability I assign to this statement is 0.5, i.e. may or may not. I also employ the My Human Law of Large Numbers, i.e. any "large enough" human population (i) has a Gaussian distribution of any cognitive skill and (ii) the parameters of this distribution is pretty much independent of the particular population sample. I don't have solid proof of this principle and in certain subdomains it may be wrong (e.g. the great cognitive differences between men and women debate, etc.) but I doubt that population differences would be significant.

Now, armed with the simple Bayesian approach and the MHLLN, we can see that most of these articles are BS. The evidence to move the a priori value of 0.5 up or down should be substantial, e.g "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". I would be extremely surprised if any gender, racial, etc. factor would derive success of any size company.

Since the above analysis is rather trivial, one then has to ask why these things continue to be written. I think the motivation is usually benign: One sees the dearth of women in startups and wants to show that "it's a good thing". This approach, however, is misguided in that, by making silly arguments or sub-par statistical analysis, it hurts the cause due to the "the lady doth protest too much" effect: many people politely nod, but see through your sloppiness and internally become convinced of just the opposite cause (especially if they are inclined to do so, i.e. if the prior was less than 0.5).

A quote I like a lot is "To be ideological is to preconceive reality." These authors, rather than being objective, have already decided what their results will be and are just filling up the blanks.
Kalzumeus Podcast 3: Growing Consulting Practices, with Brennan Dunn
ok, I mounted an iscsi disk and formatted it with some filesystem, isn't that filesystem doing the caching/buffering in DDR already, why do I need yet another dm-cache?
Once again, this is the product of unclear thinking, not distinguishing between correlation vs. causation. This is not a hard concept to grasp, so I'm really disappointed in mankind that we let this mistake happen so often.

Since gender equality is such a hot and sensitive topic, I can see how it incentivized people to jump to such conclusions.
I don't think there is anything wrong with that comment nor do I think it is insulting in any way.

EDIT: Maybe I should add I am currently in Asia. Many people here probably work harder then the people at Zygna and receive less compensation.
There needs to be some sort of reward system for filtering out new. It would be great if they would reward 1/10th of a karma point up to a certain limit per day or something. It would be motivating!
That review was pure cotton candy -- published the day before the device was released, with a few other similar embargoed pieces [1]. I was convinced that he just wanted to keep getting scoops.

I pre-ordered it and got it ASAP, and like it except for the extreme sparsity of settings. The wifi is on either for browsing or page syncing; it should be smart enough to turn off if you're not interested in either. The light can't be turned completely off [although, I admit I can't think of a use case for this]. I was excited at how quickly it transfers files -- the specs say USB 2.0, but it's pretty much instantaneous, even for 100 MB bootlegs. The uneven lighting makes me feel resentful, but of course they're just saving that for v2.0

The Kindle Store is useless at selling me new content -- I have a wishlist of books I'd like to read/buy someday. You'd think offering me a Kindle Version of one of them would be a first choice.

And of course, the paperwhite is rooted, so if Gruber wants he can just add new fonts soon [2].

[1] http://gizmodo.com/5947435/kindle-paperwhite-review-forget-e...

[2] http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192858
That is extremely inexpensive compared to new york or San Francisco.
How is the paperwhite with pdf journal articles and textbooks?
"... before the true state of their company was fully appreciated by the market."

I think this article makes it clear that the market has _no clue_ what the "true state" of the company is...
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/rfid-chip-student-m...

As a Texan, I think it is ridiculous to spend millions on a technology "solution" just to get more funding. Why would you want kids in class that don't want to be there? Money would be better spent on actually educating the kids that do attend than tracking kids that don't.
Lessons in how to crowdsource journalism from ProPublica
I read HN all the time, but I have never commented before. I am a (relatively new) Zynga employee and I wanted to add my thoughts.

Personally, I am stil very happy to be working at Zynga. I enjoy my work and my team, and I am compensated very well. Also, all of the benefits from working at Zynga (the food, the atmosphere, the very good health benefits, etc.) are still available. The only negative I see is that this job might not last for more than a year, and my stock isn't worth very much.

As for everyone hating all of the Zynga employees: everyone I have met and whom I have worked with in my two months at Zynga has been very smart and very nice and incredibly fun to work with. I don't understand why people on Reddit and HN love to demonize the employees of Zynga. I would feel very sad if my friends or I were to be laid off.
Mozilla pulls day-old Firefox 16 from download site over security risk
I don't find it heartbreaking at all, actually. While it may be a bummer for those who lost the gamble; it was probably a valuable life lesson. Surely they'll think twice about buying into unfounded hype, and depending on the promise of a paycheck later, someday.

Do you find it heartbreaking when a fool throws down $50k on red at the roulette table, and loses?